Nokia 2.No

It's sad to see normally respected gaming websites and blogs get things so utterly wrong and feed the fuel of frenzied gamers dreams of side-talkin. Okay, so maybe there aren't that many people with dreams of the long talked about 'N-Gage 2.0' in fact this news has generally brought people out in swarms question what on earth Nokia are doing in revisiting a failed device. The thing is they are not.

The N-Gage didn't do brilliantly by any stretch of the imagination, there were well publicised problems and strong competition in the handheld gaming market, especially form Nintendo. What the devices did do was provide Nokia with a lot of experience and throw out a few great games. More turn-based and strategy orientated games like Pathway to Glory and it's seque Yakuza Islandsl, Civilization and the Advance-Wars-esque High Seize worked especially well in my eyes. Nokia were able to test the water and advance the tools they used to knit together and overcome many of the common problems with mobile game development, deployment and multiplayer interaction. They've learnt a lot and are going to use it to once again try to push mobile phone gaming up a notch with N-Gage.

The new incarnation is not a device though, it's a platform. This is well known within the industry and has been well publicised. Nokia's own blog has even come out to clear things up after so much confusion. This was partially fuelled by their vagueness and hype over the GDC announcements but hey, they've got coverage so it's worked. So what to expect at GDC? I'm seeing a suite of libraries, frameworks and tools based no doubt upon SNAP/Series 60 and the other bits of firmware and software from the classic decks and back-end network infrastructure and content delivery support. Users will be able to download software for their 'N-Gage compatible' phone to access new content, link up with friends and of course play the games. Think Xbox Live and Live Anywhere for mobile phones and PC's. 'N-Gage ready' handsets, of which a number will come out over the next year or so will already have this software installed.

One hurdle in many parts of the world is the high cost of data transfer over mobile networks. The old N-Gage used retail outlets selling game cards to get around this, I don't expect to see this being the main delivery route although there may be some presence. What is more likely is software for the home computer that allows you to access the same portal as the software on the handset for downloading games and possibly even chatting with friends and keeping track of scores. The games can then be transferred and the friends-lists/contacts synced with the handset.

In the long run this platform will cover a wide range of Nokia handsets, we're probably talking dozens rather than 2 or 3. If successful they may even try to standardise their platform across all manufacturers. Compatibility and device fragmentation is after all one of the biggest hurdles for developers to overcome. If Nokia could license a suite of middleware that provided roughly the same experience across any handset the software is downloaded to, with the same sort of standards of content and quality found on traditional gaming platforms, then the N-Gage could be well worth taking seriously.